This work is a thorough investigation and comparison of intonational features of two varieties of English: the English spoken by speakers of educated Southern British English and the English spoken by native speakers of Finnish. The investigation is based on a large database and an exceptionally thorough acoustic analysis, and the discussion presents new perspectives on interlanguage intonation. The work also contains a very detailed review of contemporary theories and models of intonation. This book is intended for phoneticians and linguists, as well as teachers and students of English as a foreign language.

This book considers the issues globalization raises for second language learning and teaching. Block and Cameron's collection shows how, in an economy based on services and information, the linguistic skills of workers becomes increasingly important. New technologies make possible new kinds of language teaching, and language becomes an economic commodity with a value in the global marketplace. This has implications for how and why people learn languages, and for which languages they learn.
Drawing together the various strands of the globalization debate, this rich and varied collection of contributions explores issues such as:
*The commodification of language(s) and language skills
*The use of new media and new technologies in language learning and teaching
*The effects of globalization on the language teaching industry
*New forms of power and resistance.

Originally published in 1993, the starting place for this book is the notion, current in the literature for around 30 years at that time, that children could not learn their native language without substantial innate knowledge of its grammatical structure. It is argued that the notion is as problematic for contemporary theories of development as it was for theories of the past. Accepting this, the book attempts an in-depth study of the notions credibility. Central to the book's argument is the conclusion that the innateness hypothesis runs into two major problems. Firstly, its proponents are too ready to treat children as embryonic linguists, concerned with the representation of sentences as an end in itself. A more realistic approach would be to regard children as communication engineers, storing sentences to optimize the production and retrieval of meaning. Secondly, even when the communication analogy is adopted, it is glibly assumed that the meanings children impute will be the ones adults intend. One of the book's major contentions is that a careful reading of contemporary research suggests that the meanings may differ considerably. Identifying such problems, the book considers how development should proceed, given learning along communication lines and a more plausible analysis of meaning. It makes detailed predictions about what would be anticipated given no innate knowledge of grammar. Focusing on English but giving full acknowledgement to cross-linguistic research, it concludes that the predictions are consistent with both the known timescale of learning and the established facts about children's knowledge. Thus the book aspires to a serious challenge to the innateness hypothesis via, as its final chapter will argue, a model which is much more reassuring to psychological theory.

Since the 1970s researchers in the communicative development of infants and small children had rejected traditional models and began to explore the complex, dynamic properties of communicative exchanges. This title, originally published in 1993, proposed a new and advanced frame of reference to account for the growing body of empirical work on the emergence of communication processes at the time. Communication development in the early years of life undergoes universal processes of change and variations linked to the characteristics and qualities of different social contexts. The first section of the book presents key issues in communication research which were either revisited (intentional communication, imitation, symbolic play) or newly introduced (co-regulation, the role of emotions, shared meaning) in recent years. The second section provides an account of communication as a context-bound process partly inspired by theoretical accounts such as those of Vygotsky and Wallon. Included here are new studies showing differences in communication between infants compared with those between infants and adults, which also have important methodological implications. With perspectives from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics and educational psychology, the international contributors give a multi-disciplinary account of the expansion, variety and richness of current research on early communication. This title will be of particular interest to those involved in child development and communication research, as well as for social, educational and clinical psychologists.

This book presents a uniquely comprehensive account of learners' personal attributes, their thinking, their feelings, and their actions that have been shown to have an impact upon language learning. It is a landmark volume setting the agenda for language learning research in the 21st century and it provides invaluable information for all those engaged in language teaching.

Even though second-language learners may master the grammar and vocabulary of the new languages, they almost never achieve a native phonology (accent). Scholars and professionals dealing with second-language learners would agree that this is one of the most persistent challenges they face.
Now, for the first time, Roy Major's "Foreign Accent" covers the exploding scholarship in this area and lays out the issues specifically for audiences in the second language acquisition and applied linguistics community.

This book is the first study to examine how interactional style develops within the walls of a foreign language classroom in the first two years of language study. Results show learners to be highly sensitive to pragmatic information and that learners can move toward an appropriate interactional style through classroom interactive experience.
The book shows how learners are most often sources who offer assistance and correction, with errors serving most often to stimulate further thinking about what form is correct. Analysis shows learners to be active in seeking corrective information in the classroom setting, not only from peer partners but also from the teacher. They are active in noticing how the teacher's utterances--even when addressed to others--contrast with their own, and utilize corrective feedback intended for other students. In addition, the results show that teacher-initiated corrective feedback addressed to individual learners is only one source of corrective feedback. Learners are shown to be active in both teacher-fronted and peer interactive settings.
In newer L2 teaching methodologies which focus on the use of peer interactive tasks, the teacher's role has been de-emphasized. This book, however, shows how important the teacher's role is. The final chapter examines how the teacher can act to maximize the benefits of peer interactive tasks through how they design tasks and present them to the class. First, the chapter looks at how learners use English--their L1--in the classroom, concluding that how teachers present activities to the class has an impact on the amount of L1 used by students during peer interaction. Following up on this finding, the chapter works to address questions that teachers face in lesson planning and teaching. It presents a useful list of questions teachers can ask when designing peer interactive tasks in order to maximize the effectiveness of a wide variety of language learning tasks.

In this collection of essays, the author addresses the central issues in syntax theory, comparative syntax and the theoretically conscious study of language acquisition. Key topics are explored, including the properties of null elements and the theory of parameters. Some of the essays presented here have been highly influential in their field, while others are published for the first time.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203461789

In this book, the authors present research and theory to argue that metalinguistic awareness of one's native language is altered by either the acquisition or the learning of a second language. The main argument is that people with more than one language have different knowledge of their first language (L1) than do monolingual people, and this difference can mainly be due to the effect of subsequent languages on the development and use of L1 skills.

This book offers:
-- a multilingual perspective which emphasizes that knowledge of two or more languages results in a unique and complex competence that is not equal to the sum of knowledge of monolingual speakers of those languages,
-- an attempt to demonstrate that effective foreign language learning can lead to multicompetence even if the socio-cultural background of the target language is not present,
-- a cognitive-pragmatic perspective of language representation and processing which means a move away from the lexical-syntactic approach that has been dominating bilingual research,
-- a discussion of the effect of foreign language learning on the use and development of mother tongue skills which will focus not only on demonstrating that this influence exists but also explaining how this takes place by reexamining and discussing issues such as conceptualization in a second language, metalinguistic awareness, linguistic relativity, relationship of thought and word, and transfer of skills, and
-- an opportunity for educators to rethink and reevaluate the importance and impact of foreign language teaching and learning on the development of human personality, mother tongue use, and overall growth of the individual.

This is the first book that discusses the effect of foreign language learning on first language processing. The authors argue that multilingual development is a dynamic and cumulative process characterized by transfer of different nature, and results in a common underlying conceptual base with two or more language channels that constantly interact with each other. Language representation and processing are discussed from a cognitive-pragmatic rather than a lexical-syntactic perspective. This required the review of several crucial issues of L2 acquisition, such as transfer, vocabulary development, conceptual fluency, and pragmatic skills. The authors also reviewed a large body of literature touching on cognitive psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, SLA, philosophy, and education in order to explain multilingual development and the positive effect of foreign language learning on the first language. An important read for linguists and language educators alike, this volume: * attempts to explain multilingual development from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective, * argues that foreign language learning has a positive effect on the development and use of mother tongue skills, * relies on research findings of several different disciplines, * builds on the results of quantitative research conducted by the authors, and touches on a wide range of literature.

Now We Read, We See, We Speak compellingly captures eight women's progress toward empowerment through a Freirean-based literacy class in rural El Salvador and, in the process, provides telling lessons for literacy and adult educators around the world. This book fills a real gap in the educational literature on critical theory and literacy teaching and learning. For the first time, we have a multi-layered description and analysis of a literacy class based on Freirean precepts and principles, through the perspective of "traditional" literacy theory and as interpreted through a literacy development lens. This allows us to consider how the adult students learned to read and write within a classroom context that embodies such Freirean precepts as dialogic teacher/student relations; respect for and knowledge of the learners' lives, language and culture; and intentionality about social-political change. Thus, this book is directed toward literacy practitioners, teachers, and researchers who may have heard or read about critical theory but have a need for concrete examples of the methodological implications of such theory. Enlivening this account is the compelling description of the histories and lives of the students in the literacy class campesinos women who have survived a brutal and devastating civil war in El Salvador and who, nevertheless, stepped forward to work with a U.S.-trained literacy teacher, Robin Waterman, to learn to read and write for purposes of personal and sociocultural empowerment. The authors provide a highly readable presentation of the historical and cultural contexts for the women and the literacy class. They also raise issues of socioeconomic marginalization, unequal power relationships, and gender as they relate to literacy development. Basing their account on meticulously gathered and analyzed ethnographic data, Purcell-Gates and Waterman go beyond the presentation of the study to suggest implications and issues for adult literacy education in the United States, linking their findings to current topics in adult education, as well as literacy development in general.

"Now We Read, We See, We Speak" compellingly captures eight women's progress toward empowerment through a Freirean-based literacy class in rural El Salvador and, in the process, provides telling lessons for literacy and adult educators around the world.
This book fills a real gap in the educational literature on critical theory and literacy teaching and learning. For the first time, we have a multi-layered description and analysis of a literacy class based on Freirean precepts and principles, through the perspective of traditional literacy theory and as interpreted through a literacy development lens. This allows us to consider how the adult students learned to read and write within a classroom context that embodies such Freirean precepts as dialogic teacher/student relations; respect for and knowledge of the learners' lives, language and culture; and intentionality about social-political change. Thus, this book is directed toward literacy practitioners, teachers, and researchers who may have heard or read about critical theory but have a need for concrete examples of the methodological implications of such theory.
Enlivening this account is the compelling description of the histories and lives of the students in the literacy class "campesinos" women who have survived a brutal and devastating civil war in El Salvador and who, nevertheless, stepped forward to work with a U.S.-trained literacy teacher, Robin Waterman, to learn to read and write for purposes of personal and sociocultural empowerment. The authors provide a highly readable presentation of the historical and cultural contexts for the women and the literacy class. They also raise issues of socioeconomic marginalization, unequal power relationships, and gender as they relate to literacy development.
Basing their account on meticulously gathered and analyzed ethnographic data, Purcell-Gates and Waterman go beyond the presentation of the study to suggest implications and issues for adult literacy education in the United States, linking their findings to current topics in adult education, as well as literacy development in general.

Understanding and addressing linguistic disadvantage must be a central facet of the social justice agenda of our time. This book explores the ways in which linguistic diversity mediates social justice in liberal democracies undergoing rapid change due to high levels of migration and economic globalization. Focusing on the linguistic dimensions of economic inequality, cultural domination and imparity of political participation, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice employs a case-study approach to real-world instances of linguistic injustice. Linguistic diversity is a universal characteristic of human language but linguistic diversity is rarely neutral; rather it is accompanied by linguistic stratification and linguistic subordination. Domains critical to social justice include employment, education, and community participation. The book offers a detailed examination of the connection between linguistic diversity and inequality in these specific contexts within nation states that are organized as liberal democracies. Inequalities exist not only between individuals and groups within a state but also between states. Therefore, the book also explores the role of linguistic diversity in global injustice with a particular focus on the spread of English as a global language. While much of the analysis in this book focuses on language as a means of exclusion, discrimination and disadvantage, the concluding chapter asks what the content of linguistic justice might be.

Conversation analysis is a methodology that originated over three decades ago as a sociolinguistic approach but has since been adopted by scholars in a variety of other areas, including applied linguistics and communication. It is of great utility in second language acquisition research for its demonstrations of how micro-moments of socially distributed cognition instantiated in conversational behavior contribute to observable changes in the participants' states of knowing and using a new language. This volume describes the methodology in detail, discusses its relevance for current theories of SLA, and uses two extended examples of conversational analysis to show how learners succeed or fail at the job of learning the meaning of a word or phrase in conversational context.
This book is one of several in LEA's Second Language Acquisition Research Series dealing with specific data collection methods or instruments. Each of these monographs addresses the kinds of research questions for which the method/instrument is best suited, its underlying assumptions, a characterization of the method/instrument and extended description of its use and problems associated with its use. For more information about these volumes, please visit LEA's Web site at www.erlbaum.com

Teaching languages to adolescents can be a challenge. . . but one that is most rewarding! What works? What doesn't work? This book provides a reader friendly overview on teaching modern languages to adolescents (Years 7-13). Each chapter takes an aspect of language teaching and learning, and explains the underlying theory of instructed language acquisition and its application through examples from real language classrooms. The book explores teachers' practices and the reasoning behind their pedagogic choices through the voices of both the teachers themselves and their students. At the same time, it highlights the needs of the adolescent language learner and makes the case that adolescence is a prime time for language learning. Written in an accessible, engaging way, yet comprehensive in its scope, this will be essential reading for language teachers wishing to integrate cutting-edge research into their teaching. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core at 10.1017/9781108869812

Recent studies of vocal development in infants have shed new light on old questions of how the speech capacity is founded and how it may have evolved in the human species. Vocalizations in the very first months of life appear to provide previously unrecognized clues to the earliest steps in the process by which language came to exist and the processes by which communicative disorders arise.
Perhaps the most interesting sounds made by infants are the uniquely human 'protophones' (loosely, 'babbling'), the precursors to speech. Kimbrough Oller argues that these are most profitably interpreted in the context of a new "infrastructural" model of speech. The model details the manner in which well-formed speech units are constructed, and it reveals how infant vocalizations mature through the first months of life by increasingly adhering to the rules of well-formed speech.
He lays out many advantages of an infrastructural approach. Infrastructural interpretation illuminates the significance of vocal stages, and highlights clinically significant deviations, such as the previously unnoticed delays in vocal development that occur in deaf infants. An infrastructural approach also specifies potential paths of evolution for vocal communicative systems. Infrastructural properties and principles of potential communicative systems prove to be organized according to a natural logic--some properties and principles naturally presuppose others. Consequently some paths of evolution are likely while others can be ruled out. An infrastructural analysis also provides a stable basis for comparisons across species, comparisons that show how human vocal capabilities outstrip those of their primate relatives even during the first months of human infancy.
"The Emergence of the Speech Capacity" will challenge psychologists, linguists, speech pathologists, and primatologists alike to rethink the ways they categorize and describe communication. Oller's infraphonological model permits provocative reconceptualizations of the ways infant vocalizations progress systematically toward speech, insightful comparisons between speech and the vocal systems of other species, and fruitful speculations about the origins of language.

The relationship between the individual and the community is at the core of sociolinguistic theorizing. To date, most longitudinal research has been conducted on the basis of trend studies, such as replications of cross-sectional studies, or comparisons between present-day cross-sectional data and 'legacy' data. While the past few years have seen an increasing interest in panel research, much of this work has been published in a variety of formats and languages and is thus not easily accessible. This edited volume brings together the major researchers in the field of panel research, highlighting connections and convergences across and between chapters, methods and findings with the aim of initiating a dialogue about best practices and ways forward in sociolinguistic panel studies. By providing, for the first time, a platform for key research on panel data in one coherent edition, this volume aims to shape the agenda in this increasingly vibrant field of research.

Focusing on Slavic languages, Danko Sipka provides a systematic approach to lexical indicators of cultural identity. In contrast to existing research, which focuses heavily on syntactic and phonological approaches, Sipka's approach is novel, more systematic and encompassing, and postulates three lexical layers of cultural identity: deep, exchange, and surface. The deep layer pertains to culture-specific words, divisions, and features that are generally not subject to change and intervention. The exchange layer includes lexical markers of cultural influences resulting from lexical borrowing, which situates the speakers into various cultural circles. This layer is subject to gradual changes and some limited level of intervention from linguistic elites is possible. Finally, the surface layer encompasses the processes and consequences of lexical planning. It is subject to abrupt changes and it is shaped in constant negotiation between linguistic elites and general body of speakers.

This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.

In this volume, which simultaneously honors the career contributions of Jean Berko Gleason and provides an overview of a broad and increasingly important research area, a panel of highly productive language researchers share and evaluate methods of eliciting and analyzing language production across the life span and in varying populations. Chapters address a wide variety of historical and evolving approaches to data collection for the study of morphosyntax, the lexicon, and pragmatics, both laboratory-based and naturalistic. Special concerns that arise in the study of atypical child development, aging, and second language acquisition are a focus of the discussion.

This book contributes to the understanding of first-language loss in both immigrant and indigenous communities in (at least) three ways. First, it provides insight into the process of language loss and the factors contributing to it. Second, it attempts to define, from an insider perspective, what it means to "lose" a language. Third, it analyzes the perceived consequences of first language loss in terms of social, academic, emotional, and economic factors--an approach previously lacking in research on language loss.
Most studies of first language loss are impersonal, even when they tell emotional stories. This polyphonic book about language loss and imperfect learning of heritage languages tells the inside story. Easy to read and yet academic, it gives voice to five different storytellers who relate the histories of their first language loss and analyzes themes from 21 life-history case studies of adults who had lost their first languages while learning English. The stories in this book make a compelling argument that heritage languages should be preserved, that ESL should be about developing bilinguals not English monolinguals.
Important reading for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in ESL and bilingual education, multicultural education, cultural studies, and sociology, this book will also interest qualitative researchers as an example of a unique form of both doing and writing research.

This book contributes to the understanding of first-language loss in both immigrant and indigenous communities in (at least) three ways. First, it provides insight into the process of language loss and the factors contributing to it. Second, it attempts to define, from an insider perspective, what it means to "lose" a language. Third, it analyzes the perceived consequences of first language loss in terms of social, academic, emotional, and economic factors--an approach previously lacking in research on language loss.
Most studies of first language loss are impersonal, even when they tell emotional stories. This polyphonic book about language loss and imperfect learning of heritage languages tells the inside story. Easy to read and yet academic, it gives voice to five different storytellers who relate the histories of their first language loss and analyzes themes from 21 life-history case studies of adults who had lost their first languages while learning English. The stories in this book make a compelling argument that heritage languages should be preserved, that ESL should be about developing bilinguals not English monolinguals.
Important reading for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in ESL and bilingual education, multicultural education, cultural studies, and sociology, this book will also interest qualitative researchers as an example of a unique form of both doing and writing research.

Originally published in 1937. This book is 'an account of the special training necessary for the young boy or girl in letter-making and simple reading'. The book uses 'Basic English', the 850 words of which are included specifically for reference, as a suggested starting point for the teaching of reading and writing, and presents a system for teachers to teach letters by pictures. The order of the letters in the main section of the book is from simplest form to most difficult with a later section showing them in alphabetical order. This is a superb insight into educational history and a fascinating early explanation of a now common method.

In an era where students suffer more than ever from fatigue and tension, and when, because of television and other factors, their concentration is in serious need of improvement, the subject of Suggestopedia is more relevant than ever. Studies consistently show that Suggestopedia and its adaptations alleviate stress and improve focusing and memorization. Suggestopedia and Language Acquisition examines methods for unconscious assimilation, and in particular, Suggestopedia, its variants, its adaptations, and its background elements.

For nearly four centuries, our understanding of human development has been controlled by the debate between nativism and empiricism. Nowhere has the contrast between these apparent alternatives been sharper than in the study of language acquisition. However, as more is learned about the details of language learning, it is found that neither nativism nor empiricism provides guidance about the ways in which complexity arises from the interaction of simpler developmental forces. For example, the child's first guesses about word meanings arise from the interplay between parental guidance, the child's perceptual preferences, and neuronal support for information storage and retrieval. As soon as the shape of the child's lexicon emerges from these more basic forces, an exploration of "emergentism" as a new alternative to nativism and empiricism is ready to begin.
This book presents a series of emergentist accounts of language acquisition. Each case shows how a few simple, basic processes give rise tonew levels of language complexity. The aspects of language examined here include auditory representations, phonological and articulatory processes, lexical semantics, ambiguity processing, grammaticality judgment, and sentence comprehension. The approaches that are invoked to account formally for emergent patterns include neural network theory, dynamic systems, linguistic functionalism, construction grammar, optimality theory, and statistically-driven learning. The excitement of this work lies both in the discovery of new emergent patterns and in the integration of theoretical frameworks that can formalize the theory of emergentism.